Friday, 20 March 2015

I'm delighted to finally reveal LAST LINE, the sequel to DEAD DROP, which will be releasing in Standard and Special Editions on September 18th of this year. This latest adventure reunites Honora Blakely and Robert Armstrong in an adventure taking them from Kowloon Walled City to Belfast and London in a bid to stop an Irish terrorist from inciting civil war across the UK.

The Special Edition will come with an additional 'making of' feature entitled How To Write An Action Thriller Sequel: Analysing LAST LINE and will be priced at $3.49. The Standard edition (story only) will cost $2.99. However, early buyers will be rewarded with the Special costing $1.35 and the Standard $0.99 during the first week on sale. Both LAST LINE and DEAD DROP will go to the aforementioned higher prices from September 25th.

Sunday, 25 January 2015

My aim when starting out was to have the book published one year from its start date, which would mean a release date of late May 2015. Even with the first draft telling a story much bigger and lengthier than planned, it's still on course to meet that deadline, though a delay isn't out of the question depending on how long the editing process takes: with the scale of the plot, the action and its themes bigger and more ambitious than anything I've written before - as sequels should be - it's a tough call. However, end of May remains the target for release. As you'll discover soon enough, Robert Armstrong understands the frustration of a long wait.

As far as title and plot announcements go, the timing is also dependent on a few decisions to be made in editing, but if all goes to plan, hopefully in the next two months or so. That's a fair old wait for sure, but it'll be worth it if the book lives up to its potential. Your support, whether on DEAD DROP or my writing elsewhere, means the world to me and I want to make sure to deliver a story which blows away all expectations.

Meanwhile, a small DEAD DROP update as well: thanks to VAT changes in Europe, Amazon have automatically raised some of the prices on both editions of the book in that region. If you buy through Smashwords, prices are still the same and the best value no matter where you are. Some time after the sequel is out, I'll be raising prices to a more standard level ($2.99 for the basic edition) but DEAD DROP will remain at its current price until then and the sequel will also start out at that price as an introductory promotion. In other words, when it does arrive, be sure to pick it up quickly!

Monday, 28 April 2014

EDIT (15/04/14): Updated versions of both manuscripts are now live on Smashwords. Update will follow on Amazon shortly.

For those of you who want to read DEAD DROP but don't own a Kindle or compatible e-reader, the book is now available from Smashwords in a variety of formats including pdf (compatible with any computer with Adobe Reader downloaded, which should be virtually all of them), epub (standard ebook format) and txt (plain text compatible with almost everything). Due to Smashwords-specific formatting demands, the book looks a little different from the Amazon edition but the text is exactly the same. All revisions described in the previous blog post are naturally included in the Smashwords edition.

Also worth noting is that, because non-US readers buy direct from the American site rather than a foreign affiliate, the price works out slightly cheaper as Amazon sets a minimum price for foreign editions of ebooks which generally work out slightly pricier when the American version is set below a certain threshold.

Saturday, 26 April 2014

As mentioned on my Twitter last week, I've been working on a couple of revisions to the DEAD DROP ebook, both Standard and Special editions, which went live on Amazon on Good Friday.

The changes are almost entirely cosmetic, the most notable being a change to more standard ebook text formatting (removing the empty lines between paragraphs, adding indentations) based on feedback I've received. An extra blurb has been added to the 'About The Author' page, plus links to this blog, Facebook and the aforementioned Twitter, while a few spelling mistakes have also been corrected and a handful of adjustments made to the prose/dialogue to keep them flowing smoothly or distinguish the characters' voices a little more. In all likelihood, nothing anyone will notice.

If you've already bought the book (thank you!), you should be able to download it again to receive the latest version. Anyone buying new (welcome!) should get it automatically. Because the new formatting is a little more complex than the previous version, get in touch if anything is out of place. I've tested it extensively so, fingers crossed, there shouldn't be any problems, but it'd be very useful to hear should anything unusual be spotted in the wild, so to speak.

Thanks kindly, and please consider leaving a review if you enjoy the book as much as I hope you do!

Friday, 18 April 2014

Back in the halcyon days of 2012, an online serial called DEAD DROP was exclusively published on this blog. After a ridiculously long delay, I'm delighted to announce that the novel is now available as a Kindle ebook through the Amazon Marketplace.

As you can tell, the blog has undergone a bit of a redesign in honour of this momentous occasion. While all the old posts remain present and correct - the archive has merely shifted to the bottom of the front page - the vast majority of stories from here on out will be dedicated to keep you updated on all things DEAD DROP.

For now, pay a visit to the redesigned DEAD DROP homepage (www.dead-drop.co.uk) for more information and extracts from the novel. For quick links to buy DEAD DROP from your country's Amazon Marketplace, click any of the links below to get some action:

[DEAD DROP is available to buy now in ebook form on Smashwords and at the Amazon Marketplace at the following links (UK/US/Ca/Fr/De/Au). The following is a free extract from the novel's 1st chapter.]

'I will give you this much credit,' the Nazi commandant said. 'Your
fellows put up a good fight. Two of our pumping stations destroyed,
along with significant damage to the machinery for opening the dock
gates. Yet this is but a minor annoyance. These things can be rebuilt
or repaired in time. The dock gate we believe was your main target is
still intact, even if we have not yet had time to remove the
destroyer you attempted to ram it with.'

He paced the small room. It seemed as though he was still trying to
come to terms with the situation as he described it to his two
prisoners, who were tied to chairs by the back wall. Two armed guards
surveyed the scene from next to the room's only door. The
commandant's shadow circled him as he walked beneath the naked
lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.

[DEAD DROP is available to buy now in ebook form on Smashwords and on the Amazon Marketplace at the following links (UK/US/Ca/Fr/De/Au). The following is a free extract from the novel's 11th chapter.]

With the wind tugging at his hair, Armstrong felt an electric thrill
as he increased his speed on the straightening road, but the
treacherous surface beneath his tyres reminded him to drive with his
head, rather than on adrenaline. The bike was slightly heavier than
he was used to, but its winter tyres were designed for traction on
slippery surfaces.

The convoy came into view up ahead. It consisted of three vehicles: a
military jeep at the front and back, protecting a prison van in
between.

Wednesday, 15 May 2013

The
Book Of Mormon,
Trey Parker and Matt Stone's broadway behemoth, arrives in London
under the stormcloud of controvery which follows the South Park
creators wherever they go. The show's depiction of a poverty-striken
Ugandan village being saved by two white missionaries has drawn the
wrath of its left-leaning attendees, while conservative voices have
risen in characteristic fury to denounce the mocking of white
religious righteousness.

In a year where Great Britain has been celebrated by its Queen's jubilee, a successful Olympics and the fiftieth anniversary of its greatest cinematic icon, there's something gleefully appropriate about the year's final show of national identity tearing the pomposity and circumstance down into the mud. Brits often cite self-deprecation as a shared characteristic, and Sightseers is a movie which delights in pettiness rather than pagentry, a nation of grumblers as frustrated by manners, history and the countryside as they are in love with them.

In America, social rebellion has been given a glamourous veneer by such movies as Natural Born Killers or Bonnie And Clyde, perpetuating a myth of the heroic outlaw originating in the tales of the Old West. Britain has its romantic ideals too, but places as much value in subverting as championing them: in a year where Judi Dench's recital of Alfred Lord Tennyson's 'Ulysses' provided a moment of unashamedly thrilling patriotism, Ben Wheatley's use of Blake's 'Jersualem' over a man beating a fellow rambler to death following an argument about dog excrement becomes all the more perfect.